The reclusive Elizabeth Fraser, the unforgettable voice of the Cocteau Twins, will return to the concert stage this summer for a pair of rare performances at the Antony-curated Meltdown festival at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which are being billed as her first solo concerts since the Cocteaus split up in 1998.

According to The Guardian, Fraser agreed to the performances — her first of any kind since appearing with Massive Attack in 2006 — at the request of Antony, of Antony and the Johnsons.
“It doesn’t take much from Antony,” Fraser told the Guardian. “He’s lovely. He just said, ‘Why don’t you consider doing it?’ He knew I’d be very anxious. He knows I’m very shy, but I’m getting to know Antony and opening up to him. He thought it would be harder to convince me than it was.”

Pitchfork: And Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins is going to perform.

AH: The fact that she's committed to doing two concerts is unprecedented in her career. She's actually presenting mostly all-new material, and that's going to be probably one of the centerpieces of the festival, Liz Fraser doing two nights. It's a really, really big deal.

While this gives me hope that Liz might someday perform in the states again, I found this quote from Antony a bit amusing:

...I think for me, it's the next step that's interesting. Since the early 2000s, a lot of straight boys created bands that are about, like, nurturing this pastoral inner life-- these colorful psychedelic lives and nurturing their sensitivity as straight boys. And that's great and everything, but we need to start participating in the bigger picture because this whole ecology of our world is going to start collapsing in the next 50 years, and if there's going to be a validity to anything, in 50 years' time just like the way they were, people are going to be asking what the kids of today are thinking, what the artists of today were thinking. Were they just checking out? Were they just, like, hugging a couple of cuddly bears or feel-good pillows? What is the point of music at this point? Is it just a beer swill at Coachella? Is it a few sensitive guys getting up there having a circle jerk while all the girls and all the other people have to sit around and try and find their experience within their opaque song styling? We could be participating, and that's what I aspire to do, and so I wanted to create a vivid festival that had some teeth to it.